Turkish MP and human rights campaigner, Safak Pavey, has won this year’s award for Secularist of the Year. She was presented with the £5,000 Irwin Prize by honorary associate and shadow foreign office minister, Kerry McCarthy MP, at a lunch-time event hosted by the National Secular Society on Saturday. Safak Pavey is a member of Turkey’s main opposition party and sits for the Istanbul constituency. She is known for her international work in human rights, the promotion of the rights of women and minorities in Turkey, as well as humanitarian aid and peace-building. [Read more]

Secular Values, Not Religion, Make Us a Tolerant Society

The secular mind is better equipped than religion to reach reasoned and compassionate judgments. That was the argument of Ian McEwan at the Oxford Literary Festival this week. It should not be controversial. Religious belief resolves no moral problem and yields no knowledge. On the contrary, much suffering is caused by people who believe they know the will of God and have a duty to enforce it. Of course, not all religions are like that. [Read more]

Arabs In Israel Contemplate Borders Of Palestinian State

Mideast peace talks pushed by the U.S. could include a borderline that leaves some Arabs, who are in Israel as part of a minority of non-Jewish Israeli citizens, into a new Palestinian state. [Download Story]

Challenging Obedience Without Question

Obedience without questioning ” the will of god” is taught to every child raised in a faith as the highest virtue. Constant examples in the world of reality show the opposite to be true. Usually, the Inquisition and the slaughters of non-believers or those of other faiths than the prevailing one, throughout religious history, are dragged out as examples of just how damaging obedience to religious tenets and authorities can be. These are dismissed by true believers, who are disturbed by negative facts of any kind in their beliefs. [Read more]

Americans United Tells Phoenix Officials To End Use Of Anti-Prostitution Program Anchored In Religion

Government officials in Phoenix are violating the law by compelling individuals suspected of prostitution-related offenses to participate in a program administered by religious groups, Americans United for Separation of Church and State says. In a letter sent today to city officials, attorneys with Americans United assert that the program, Project ROSE, clearly violates the First Amendment. [Read more]

Talk of Freeing a Spy for Israel Stirs Old Unease for U.S. Jews

Each year, just before Passover, Malcolm Hoenlein writes a letter to President Obama requesting that he grant clemency to Jonathan J. Pollard, the American sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for passing suitcases stuffed with classified documents to Israel. This week, with his goal suddenly within reach, Mr. Hoenlein, the leader of an umbrella group of American Jewish organizations, has held off sending the letter. [Read more]

500 Mormon Women to Enter Temple Square to Seek Priesthood Tickets

Even though the LDS Church asked Ordain Women participants to stay off Temple Square in their quest to gain tickets to an all-male priesthood meeting at this weekend’s General Conference, an estimated 500 plan to enter that space Saturday night. [Read more]

Science, God, and Rock ’n Roll (Part 2)

A physicist, a zoologist, an imam, and a priest walk into a debate about origins… It’s no joke. Rather, it’s a glimpse into a documentary on the quest of two scientists to confront religion head-on. Zoologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss, each a bestselling author, have been traveling the world together to champion the virtues of science and reason and shatter the pretensions of religion. [Read more]

For Such A Time As This: Creation or Accident?

A debate has been going on for several generations on whether our universe was created by a divine Being or if it just somehow happened on its own accord. Which side you are on depends largely on which nature you allow to have sway over you. [Read more]

To New Bethany and Back: One Woman’s Journey to Report the Man She Says Sexually Abused Her

For 25 years, Jennifer Halter, 39, had been living with memories of what happened to her at a religious girls’ home in Arcadia, La. In her mind, the fences towered 15 feet high and stretched for miles, every chain link pinning her in with the man she says sexually abused her, destroyed her faith and led her to try to kill herself. [Read more]

It’s Been a Bad Month for the Creationists

I almost pity them. First there’s the discovery of gravitational waves that confirm a set of models for the origin of the universe — I can tell they’re trying to spin that one (it confirms the universe had a beginning, just like the Bible says!), but it’s obvious which perspective, scientific or religious, has the greater explanatory power. [Read more]

Faith schools will no longer be allowed to redact questions about evolution and reproduction from science exam papers on grounds of religious sensitivity, and any attempt to do so will be treated as “malpractice” the exam regulator has said. Ofqual has made clear that exam boards must not enter into agreements with schools to allow redactions and that any agreements currently in place should be withdrawn before any further assessments are taken. [Read more]

Bob Cargill on the Holy Grail

A pair of historians recently claimed that a chalice in a Spanish church is really the Holy Grail. [Read more]

When Science and Philosophy Collide in a ‘Fine-tuned’ Universe

The glory days of Karl Popper, who argued that falsifiability was a hallmark of good science, and Thomas Kuhn, who noted the phenomenon of paradigm shifts, are long gone — in science, if not in the humanities. For many years, scientific philosophy as practised by scientists has languished, punctuated only by lapses such as the Sokal hoax, when NYU physicist Alan Sokal wrote a tongue-in-cheek article with a lot of scientific nonsense that was accepted by a leading journal in the postmodern science studies field (and launched a cottage industry of similar hoaxes). [Read more]

A federal court ruled on Thursday that New York City can ban churches from renting public schools for worship services. The 2-1 ruling from the Second Circuit court is the latest twist in a long-running legal battle between the Bronx Household of Faith and the Board of Education of the City of New York. The church has held services at Public School 15/2 since 2002, according to its website. [Read more]

ACLU Claims Hawaii Preschool Aid Unconstitutional

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii wants a court to order the state to stop providing preschool tuition subsidies for children attending religious institutions. The ACLU claims in a lawsuit the state’s Preschool Open Doors program unconstitutionally violates separation of church and state. [Read more]

George Washington Never Wrote That Jesus Prayer

A lawsuit by the American Humanist Association and four individual plaintiffs resulted in a federal ruling on Tuesday, March 25, that placed a preliminary injunction on the Board of Commissioners of Carroll County, Maryland. The commissioners were ordered to cease opening meetings with prayers that specifically reference Jesus Christ, though they can continue having prayers that don’t invoke “the name of a specific deity associated with any specific faith or belief.” The ruling was issued by Judge William D. Quarles Jr. of the U.S. District Court of Maryland. [Read more]

Learning Ignorance

This one’s from the auto-play advert heaven Christian Post. Parents of children in 3 Kentucky Public Schools are expressing concern after an secular group set up a booth to allow students to pick up copies of secular texts for free. You say “surely this is half the story” and I say “yes”. [Read more]

A Message to State and Local Officials: Be Reasonable!

We are all human beings faced with realities that must be tackled through reason. The National Day of Prayer is an affront to this reality and must be challenged, or at the very least amended. Prayer alone, whether secular or religious, is not what this country needs. It falls upon us ordinary citizens, torch-bearers of reason, science, and critical thinking, to change the focus of this day. For that reason, various local groups of the American Humanist Association, along with coalition groups, are reaching out to their communities and local or state governments to raise awareness about the National Day of Reason. [Read more]